Knowing about crisis

With this brief piece, we raise some questions and suggest some alternative directions for knowing about crisis. In particular, we point to the role of core beliefs in shaping society, including the way in which those held by academics shape research and how knowledge about crisis is produced, as well as the influence core beliefs have on the everyday lives of the people with whom we work. We draw on the work of Miki Kashtan (2014), who identifies three core beliefs that have become persistent themes in our work with communities: separateness, scarcity, and powerlessness. We offer some examples of and reflections on work we have done in the Govan neighborhood of Glasgow, Scotland by way of gesturing toward how we understand core beliefs to work and how they might be engaged with. Our intention is not to denigrate the value of beliefs, but rather to point out the value in recognizing the beliefs that inform our ways of knowing and actions.     

On The Class Location Of Contract Farmers In The Kenyan Economy

The purpose of this paper is to address some contemporary issues in the debate about rural social transformation: the so called ‘peasantry debate’. In order to clarifty these issues, we discuss material collected in Kenya on tobacco contract farming. Our intention is to integrate theoretical and substantive analyses of the current Kenyan situation. Tobacco farming is, we argue, a particularly clear instance of a form of subsumption of petty commodity production to capital. Although British-American Tobacco concentrates all the moments of capital–productive, circulating, and merchant –within a unified organisational framework, it enters the local growersapos; economy in the form of merchant capital. Combined with the active support of the Kenyan state, this has the effect of shoring up the household productive form. However, it does not (as some would argue) create a class of rural accumulators. Household production is sustained only at subsistence level. Contract farming is not, in our view, an ‘agent of transformation’ although pressures from the world economy might in time, have the effect of eroding the present form of exchange between Bat (K) and tobacco growers.     

Non-Electoral Accountability in Global Politics: Strengthening Democratic Control within the Global Garment Industry

This article challenges the widespread view that democraticaccountability is unattainable in global politics because ofthe impracticality of establishing global elections. Instead,it argues that global democratic accountability can potentiallybe achieved by instituting non-electoral mechanisms that performequivalent accountability functions through more workable institutionalmeans. This argument is defended at a theoretical level, andfurther illustrated by analysing an empirical case study ofthe institutions through which labour standards in the globalgarment industry are determined. The article first explainswhy electoral mechanisms are no longer a viable means for achievingdemocratic accountability in political contexts such as theglobal garment industry, that are characterized by the decentralizeddispersion of public decision-making power among a range oforganizationally disparate state and non-state actors. It thenidentifies the key democratic function of electoral accountabilityas that of ensuring a reasonable degree of public control overpublic decision-making, and argues that this normative functioncan, in principle, be legitimately performed through non-electoralas well as electoral mechanisms. Finally, it elaborates thekey institutional features of a legitimate framework of non-electoralaccountability – public transparency and public disempowerment– and illustrates how these functions could potentiallybe achieved in practice, with reference to the example of theglobal garment industry.     

The JK Rowling photo case – Are privacy rights evolving for the online era?

The Court of Appeal's recent decision in the case brought on behalf of JK Rowling's young son has some important implications for the developing law of privacy in the UK (David Murray (by his litigation friends Neil Murray and Joanne Murray) v Big Pictures Limited [2008] EWCA Civ 446). Most strikingly, the court's approach shows that the scope of potentially private information is broader than previously thought.The claim brought was for breach of confidence, misuse of private information and under the Data Protection Act 1998 (“the DPA”) and resulted from a photograph of JK Rowling's son, taken covertly in a public place, being published in a newspaper.The decision is significant for photographers and newspaper publishers, in particular, because it suggests that more types of information, especially photographs, may be capable of protection as “private”. It does not follow, however, that this development will prejudice freedom of expression: the balance between privacy and press freedom still needs to be struck, with neither taking precedence over the other.     

Young people,family relationships and civic participation

This article examines young people’s civic participation and the extent to which this is influenced by the family. Although literature on young people’s civic participation is abundant, the role of the family in influencing this participation is largely absent. Drawing on survey data collected from 976 young people aged 13–14 in South Wales, we outline the extent and nature of civic participation and how this varies according to relationships with parents and grandparents. Our data show that relationships with mothers and grandparents are particularly important in young people’s accounts of their participation, suggesting that family is far more important in developing a propensity for engagement in civil society than is commonly understood.